1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method for manufacturing a printed circuit board, more particularly to a method for manufacturing a printed circuit board, in which an oxidant capable of polymerizing conductive polymers is selectively marked on a board using imprinting, and the monomer of a conductive polymer is filled in the selected pattern and polymerized, to provide a conductive polymer wiring pattern.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the past, a printed circuit board (PCB) was manufactured by pressing a copper foil onto epoxy resin or phenol resin, which are thermosetting/insulating resins, with a heat-plate press to make a PCB substrate or by plating a copper film directly onto a resin board.
However, with the recent trends toward thinner and more functional electronic products, the printed circuit board is also becoming smaller and more packaged, with finer patterns, where one of the methods most widely used for manufacturing minute structures is photolithography, which is a method of forming a pattern on a board coated with a photoresist thin film. Here, the size of the pattern formed is limited by the optical diffraction. Thus, photolithography entails the problems that, as the degree of integration of components is increased, physical differences may appear in the photoresist pattern itself or in the spaces in-between the pattern due to the interferences on the light, and also that reactions between the photoresist and impurities created during the processes may erode the photoresist such that a pattern may be formed that is different from the one desired. Furthermore, there is a complication in the processes of having to remove the resist.
Meanwhile, a method for forming fine wiring of a nano-level size is to use the imprinting method. This is a method of fabricating a required shape on the surface of a relatively stronger material beforehand, and then imprinting it like a stamp on another material to form fine patterns. In the conventional imprinting method, a mold was fabricated to have a pattern that corresponds with the fine pattern of a desired shape, and then patterning by imprinting on a resin insulation layer, and plating the inside of the pattern with a conductive metal to form the fine pattern.
This method has the advantage that mass production may readily be achieved with a lower cost compared to that of the photoresist pattern forming method. However, there is also a drawback in that it is difficult to apply the printed circuit board manufactured using the conventional printing method to flexible components of a large area.